It’s pretty ridiculous, when you think about it – that a population of maybe 13 and a half million “runs the world,” which is closing in on about 7 billion these days. While I could maybe understand how that could work when there were only three billion people in the world – and the Jews were maybe a half a percent of the total – now that we’re just a quarter of a percent, you’d think that canard would fall away.

And yet it persists – and strengthens! Of course there are prominent Jews in many fields – just as there are prominent Irish, Italians, Americans, and Chinese. But somehow, there seem to be “more” prominent Jews – ie, more than you would expect. At least that’s the impression people have (and not just anti-Semites, either). And thanks to an article in the New York Times this week, I think I may know why.

The article, by David Brooks, discusses the “protocol society”- a society that produces not “stuff,” but intellectual property. According to Brooks,

A software program is a protocol for organizing information. A new drug is a protocol for organizing chemicals. Wal-Mart produces protocols for moving and marketing consumer goods. Even when you are buying a car, you are mostly paying for the knowledge embedded in its design, not the metal and glass.

In other words, Western society is now primarily producing ideas, and not just any old ideas – ideas that revolve primarily around the spoken and written word.

In other words, America (and the advanced West) are today in the business of dealing with words – instructions, rules, regulations, all of them leading to ideas. Exactly what Jews excel in!

Don’t take my word for it; the famous genetic researcher, Charles Murray, asks in an article in Commentary magazine in 2007 why the Jews are so overrepresented in the sciences, arts and literature, when it comes to superior achievement:

What accounts for this remarkable record? A full answer must call on many characteristics of Jewish culture, but intelligence has to be at the center of the answer. Jews have been found to have an unusually high mean intelligence as measured by IQ tests since the first Jewish samples were tested.

Murray goes on to cite IQ scores, showing that Jews score higher than the general population. However, he says

Jews are only about average on the subtests measuring visuo-spatial skills, but extremely high on subtests that measure verbal and reasoning skills.

In other words, Jews have an IQ propensity for dealing successfully with ideas – or, in Brook’s words, “protocols!” Interestingly, Murray says that Jewish accomplishment in general society (as opposed to within Jewish academic society, where everyone was expected to be literate) dates only to the mid 1800s, when society began its slow turn from agriculture and manual labor to intellectual creativity.

Now that we’ve arrived at Brooks’ “protocol society” – where intellectual property, “ideas that revolve primarily around the spoken and written word,” is the main product – it seems that Jews are everywhere, even if they’re not, because in order to succeed, everyone has to “think Jewish,” at least to some extent! The better your verbal and written skills, the more successful you’ll be in navigating modern society.

Why this should be true for Jews in particular, says Murray (and also, at least partially, for other groups as well, such as Chinese and Indians), is the subject of his very interesting Commentary article (interestingly, Murray says this applies mostly to Ashkenazi Jews, who lived in more advanced societies, but the letters to the magazine afterwards cite the possibility that it could apply to Sephardim, as well). So, the next time someone rants on about how “the Jews” run everything, keep in mind that the ones running things might not actually be Jewish – they might have just come up with a way to “think Jewish” and succeed in the “protocol society!”

Related articles by Zemanta

• Review: The Invention of the Jewish People (thejc.com)
• The European Center for Jewish Students and Israeli-born American Philanthropist Mouli Cohen Partner to Support the increase of the Jewish Population in Europe (prweb.com)

If you thought you weren’t getting the internet connection speed you’re paying for, you may be right. According to Knesset member Meir Sheetrit, the two companies in Israel that provide infrastructure and backbone services for internet connection – Bezeq (the phone company) and Hot (the cable company) – are not going to be able to provide the super-fast speeds they are promising to customers, except in maybe a few places.

Sheetrit suggests that the companies be required by law to tell customers the maximum speed they can expect in their areas, considering the potential for misleading customers. “Often, because of their naiveté, customers sign up for service at high speed and prices, only to find out that the company is unable to provide the service,” he wrote in a letter to the Knesset Technology Committee.

Sheetrit forgot to add what comes next – the near-impossibility of getting your money back after you’ve been ripped off by these vultures. It’s bad enough that they (by “they” I mean almost every large service company, not just ISPs) will try to sell you stuff you don’t need at almost every turn, but when the service or product they dump off on you doesn’t even work, trying to get your money back is out of the question – the best you can hope for, usually, is a credit towards a future purchase. In other words, once they’ve got your money, you’re not getting it back!

As I wrote in the Jerusalem Post, it’s a worldwide trend – service and quality you once expected as a matter of course is now “premium,” as companies, strapped for cash, nickel and dime us for everything they can squeeze out of us.

Why am I not surprised? This is just another manifestation of an attitude that you find in so many places, from the corner store to the bank to, of course, the government. They sweet talk you and act like you’re their best friend when they try to get you to sign up – but once they have your money, try getting the time of day out of them!

Here are a few good tests I’ve found which indicates how badly you are going to get ripped off:

• Before ordering a service, call the company’s service line, and see how long they keep you waiting. While all companies are guilty of giving lousy service, some are less bad than others. As I do lots of research for my writing, I call companies like Orange, Bezeq, etc. to ask questions, even if I’m not a subscriber to the service. A good indication of what to expect is the “sales to service call” ratio – ie, the time difference between how fast the sales people answer the phone, and how slowly the service people talk to you. The bigger the gap, the worse the service, I’ve found.

• Ditto for the sales pitches they give you, both recorded and live. Some companies will respond to nearly every question with a sales pitch, basically ignoring what you asked (but implying that your problem can be solved if you just ‘upgrade’). Often long times on hold are coordinated with repeated recorded sales pitches – it’s as if they keep you waiting just so they can get you to listen to their stupid ads! Avoid companies that do this, if possible.

• Any service or sales person that does not implicitly understand that they work for you – and not the opposite – is a bad reflection on the company they work for. When I speak to sales or service reps, I’m very attuned to signs of cynicism or superciliousness. If the person on the other end of the phone sounds like s/he has his/her nose up in the air when they talk to you – like they’re somehow better than you (even though you’re paying their salary!) – it’s time to move on.

How do you resolve these issues? In Israel, a loud voice always helps. You have to be prepared “lahafoch shulchanot” (go crazy), as they say. Threaten to switch, cancel the service, or threatening to tell all your friends how bad the service/product is can help too, sometimes; most of the people you speak to on the phone don’t care one way or the other, but if you really do cancel or switch, you can be sure their manager will be listening to the recording of the conversation and probably call them on it, so if you can make them understand that it is they who are causing you to want to leave the company, they may think twice before acting nasty. Unfortunately, there’s no sure-fire single method that works every time; it’s a matter of experimentation, seeing which company reacts to what tactic.

But it’s worth the effort; when you confront the service providers and make them understand what they are doing wrong, you are contributing to an improvement of the consumer culture in this country – and maybe even helping the next person not to get ripped off!

Related articles by Zemanta

• The scandalous plague of direct marketing telephone scam/spam (ouriel.typepad.com)
• Capping Israel’s teen drinking | Seth Freedman (guardian.co.uk)